Quote of the Day: Christina Hendricks: "There's Sexual Harassment at Work Every Single Day" in Hollywood

A new interview with Christina Hendricks in The Guardian is making the rounds because of the (schadenfreude-tastic) revelation that the actress was dropped by her agency when she signed up to play Joan Holloway on Mad Men. Hendricks recalls, "They said, 'It's a period piece, it's never going to go anywhere. We need you to make money, and this isn't going to make money.' They ended up dropping me."But the even more attention-grabbing comment, at least to us, occurs elsewhere in the piece, when the actress opens up about what working as a woman in Hollywood is really like: "You know, it's difficult in the arts to pinpoint it, but there's sexual harassment at work every single day, all day long. Certainly in the respect and position [of women], you feel like, 'Am I allowed to ask these questions or contribute in this way?'"

She apparently sees the industry's endemic sexism as a symptom of society's larger inequalities: "Society has conditioned you that way. As women, we feel we can't ask for things. There's been a lot of research done recently and, more often than not, if a woman goes in to ask for a raise, she'll get it. But she's thinking, 'Do I deserve it? I've got to give a list of why I deserve it.' Whereas a man will just go in and ask for a raise. It's so scary."